If you pay attention to the birth and adolescence of new social media channels, then chances are Pinterest is high on your radar these days. “Photo-bookmarking social network Pinterest, run by Palo Alto, California-based Cold Brew Labs, reportedly grew by 52 percent, to 17.8 million unique visitors, in February, making it the nation’s third-fastest-growing website.” (from Portfolio.com, 03/26/12). We’ve seen new social media channels growing faster and faster to trend benchmarks – Facebook, GooglePlus, and now Pinterest. As more and more people do more and more online in social sites, it makes sense that the adoption timelines would be compressed.
In the social media marketing class I teach at GSU, the most common blogged-about social channel recently was Pinterest (I assign students to research and blog about a specific social media channel, its popularity and marketing applicability).
An intriguing, rapid-growing phenom, Pinterest has a massive female target audience (I believe recent numbers I’ve heard attribute around 85%). It can be labeled a “digital pin board site,” where users collect images and info from the web, “pin” them to their own pin boards, to share, comment on and access later. They can also use Pinterest for more functional purposes, such as to-do lists, and item shopping input from friends.
Marketers of course should desire their brands to be the object of “pinning” and positive commenting and recommendations. Being there and being easy to “pin” suddenly become vital social media marketing activities. After all, why not? The more our traditional, manual and physical tasks become digitized and automated, why not the old, cluttered pin boards our mothers and grandmothers kept? Where’s that old recipe again? Check Pinterest!
How about you? How do you feel about Pinterest and rapid-growth social media channels? Respond and comment below!
Jake Aull | Zen Fires | Websites, SEO, SocialMedia & Design
email | 404.259.5550 | @jakeaull | Facebook.com/ZenFires
